Wednesday, June 25, 2008

C20 and C24

I made these two simplest fullerenes: C20 and C24. C20 was made in Prof. Chiu's group meeting yesterday afternoon. These two fullerenes are quite easy to make for experienced beaders, but not necessary easy for beginners. We have about 15 students in this mini-workshop, most of them have no experience on beading. My goal is to introduce the world of beaded fullerenes to these people with one hour lecture and then let them have a hands-on experience by making the simplest C20. C20 is a dodecahedron with all carbon atoms located on the vertices. Even though, you can create this molecule by simply weaving 12 pentagons. But there are many subtle points in the whole weaving process, because the number of beads and number of holes that have to be added and passed varies from time to time. They are not easy to explain before students start to bead. I will think about how to explain these subtly points later.